


Bioman in the Acid Jungle

by nimblermortal



Category: Demon's Lexicon - Sarah Rees Brennan
Genre: Biology, Epistolary, M/M, abuse of South American geography, mild swearing, spoilers through book three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 11:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/pseuds/nimblermortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie and Seb have a huge fight after Seb accidentally almost summons a demon and Seb winds up on the wrong continent. Written for torakowalski's prompt "Magical boyfriends in love".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bioman in the Acid Jungle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [torakowalski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torakowalski/gifts).



The wind was probably what saved Seb’s life. It blew a paper across the yard, and while he was trudging over to fetch it, he realized that this was probably the exact opposite of what he meant to be doing.

He looked back across the yard, paper in hand, at the ruins of his sketchbook and the magician’s circle sketched across its ripped-out pages. What he ought to do was run inside, grab a lighter and a phone, and call Mae Crawford while he lit the pages on fire. He would rather walk back across the yard, stab a pin into each page to keep it where it was, and get back to what he was doing. He could see the signs light up inside his head, and his tongue kept curling around the syllables of a demon’s name.

He stood for a long time in the garden, the wind grabbing at the paper in his hand. He listened to the flutter and wondered what sort of demon might answer to that name. Alan Ryves had said it didn’t matter what name you called a demon as long as you believed it. There was probably a demon for papyric wind-fluttering. Or maybe it was a demon calling the wind to do the fluttering, asking Seb to bring it into this world.

No. He would not call a demon just for its satisfaction. He dropped the paper and put his hands over his ears as he went inside. He didn’t grab a lighter; he grabbed his phone from the corner of his desk, and then he sat down on the bed and called Jamie.

"Just so you know," Jamie said slowly, looking out at the yard where the decimated pages of Seb’s sketchbook had blown across the grass, "This is really not what I was imagining when I asked for a special anniversary. I appreciate the thought and all, but demon summoning is really more like a fifth-year celebration."

"Yeah, well," said Seb, looking out across what was at least not the burning wreckage of a back yard, "I go the extra mile for you."

"I just don't know if I'm ready for that kind of commitment yet. Blood, sacrifices, murdering and being murdered.” Seb flinched. “It's just so much, you know?"

"Sorry," said Seb, shifting his weight. Any second now Jamie would adjust to what he was seeing, and then Seb would really get it. "I thought we were past all that, but I'm scared that if I touch it I'll go the rest of the way."

"Are we getting boring?" Jamie inquired politely, his voice very even. "Are you trying to spice up our love life? Because I can't imagine _what on Earth_ would prompt you to try to summon a demon again."

Seb was caught momentarily by the idea of how precisely a demon could spice up their love life, and he jerked back abruptly from that thought. "I didn't mean to," he said miserably. "It seemed like it just happened. I mean, obviously it didn't just happen, but I wasn't thinking about it, and then... well, nothing makes a whole lot of sense anymore and the only thing I'm..."

"Did you run across a circle in Cosmo when you were taking a quiz?" Jamie asked. He was speaking really slowly and clearly, like he was gearing himself up to spin even faster than usual. "Because you really can't trust Cosmo."

"Isn't Cosmo for girls?" Seb tried. He should have known that would get him backwards if anywhere, and sure enough Jamie seemed to be recoiling to pack yet more fury into his body, but none of his other arguments were getting anywhere - not that they would - and he didn't know how to say to Jamie that he really didn't know how to do anything else, that magicians didn't believe in human lifestyles and knowing the descriptions of seven different planes, while satisfying, didn't exactly prepare one for shopping expeditions. And even that wasn’t it at all. "Look, I'm really sorry. I didn't - nothing I say is going to make any difference, but I definitely wasn't going to feed anyone to it. I was just going to, you know, call it up and make it go away again. It seemed really harmless while I was planning it."

Totally harmless. Completely, inarguably harmless to summon an incredibly powerful creature of magic in ridiculously fragile bindings on the assumption that, once he had it in his control, he wouldn't do anything with it.

"It seemed really harmless," Jamie said flatly. "Really harmless. Like, oh, dropping a beaker of acid on your shoes. Or injecting heroin."

"Yeah, well maybe I should keep a beaker of acid in the bathroom," Seb snapped. "Drop some sense into my shoes. I know it was stupid but it made sense, that's why I called you, probably I should have known better than to expect sense out of you. Sorry. Again."

Jamie crossed his arms. "Maybe you should've known better," he agreed. "I'm your boyfriend, not your brain."

“I thought you were supposed to be here for me when things got a little out of hand! I thought that was something even the leader of a Circle would do for his -”

“Even the stupidest apprentice magician learns to walk away sometimes!” Jamie leaned forward. “Except for you. You never were any good at anything, were you? Certainly not recognizing just how soon your limitations begin.”

“Well, maybe I should learn!” Seb shouted, and turned his back on Jamie. When he got to his room, he slammed the door behind him. If Jamie was following, he could at least take that clue and leave Seb alone. Unless he wanted to look just as ridiculous and stupid as he seemed to think Seb was.

He threw himself on the bed and wrapped the sheets around his hands. If he kept quiet, he could hear Jamie’s and Nick’s voices outside. Nick, of course, did not sound at all perturbed at hearing raised voices. Neither, to Seb’s fury, did Jamie. He listened, seething, until the car started and the sound of its engine - distinctive, of course, because Nick would no sooner drive a normal car than Jamie would show up in one - disappeared down the street.

Then he got up, opened his computer, and wrote a short email.

 

_Excerpt from Skype transcript, 18:36 13 June_

JamesHook: Can we call?

S Macfarlane: No

JamesHook: Why isn’t your picture still a crab?

S Macfarlane: Oh, so we’re talking now?

JamesHook: And your name isn’t SebastianCrab anymore, I don’t like that.

S Macfarlane: You don’t have to.

JamesHook: Look, I’m sorry, can we talk?

JamesHook: Where are you?

S Macfarlane: America.

S Macfarlane: Shh I’m busy

JamesHook: You are not busy. You are never busy for me.

S Macfarlane: Can it wait half an hour?

JamesHook: I got up for you

JamesHook: I interrupted my beauty sleep

JamesHook: Do you know how much beauty sleep I need?

S Macfarlane: Oh my god shut up

 

_19:14 13 June_

S Macfarlane: Did you seriously send me messages for half an hour?

S Macfarlane: How are you even typing?

JamesHook: vrey slowly

JamesHook: there’s this program coming in a couple days that will type what I say

S Macfarlane: That is exactly what the world does not need

S Macfarlane: Jamie with the power of text at his tongue

JamesHook: so you’re not mad at me anymore?

JamesHook: can we talk? where are you?

S Macfarlane: America.

JamesHook: haha yes you said. bring me a statue of liberty. with an eagle. and a flag.

S Macfarlane: No, the other America.

JamesHook: oh my god you’re fucking serious

JamesHook: WHY?

JamesHook: stop typing and tell me

S Macfarlane: I got an internship. I’d been thinking of taking it before but... I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before but I was worried about it and then I thought that it would jinx it and then I got it and I realized I hadn’t told you yet so um I uh I was waiting for the right time and I didn’t tell the intern people either and then you got really mad at me and obviously England wasn’t working so I figured if I went I’d be pretty busy and I wasn’t going to start drawing symbols in the jungle or anything - haha I thought it would all be jungle here - and you said I needed to learn to walk away myself so...

S Macfarlane: Anyway I should be back in six weeks. Does this mean... we’re okay?

JamesHook: you went to AMERICA

S Macfarlane: Sorry?

JamesHook: how is that ever going to be okay?

JamesHook: also why

S Macfarlane: I got an internship

S Macfarlane: I’m working with a professor here who studies the ecosystems on the Amazon. It’s really cool work. She’s going back up to do a field study later this year.

JamesHook: you said amazon. my last hope that you were joking is gone.

JamesHook: i thought you hated biology?

S Macfarlane: No, you hate biology. You refused to take it. You said if you took it you would turn into Bioman and everything you looked at would decompose.

S Macfarlane: If you didn’t know I liked it you have only yourself to blame. You don’t get to dictate what sciences are interesting.

S Macfarlane: If you had taken bio I could tell you more than ‘she studies ecosystems’.

JamesHook: ok so teach me bioman. write me a letter.

S Macfarlane: Okay.

 

_19:42 13 June, unreceived_

JamesHook: ok? thats it?

JamesHook: Seb?

JamesHook: it had better be a love letter

JamesHook: also i am writing a hate letter

JamesHook: what sort of boyfriend just goes to america

 

_Letter, written 14 June_

Dear Seb,

I am going to date this just to hurt you: Week 1 Day 4. It is the time since you have painfully betrayed me by going to America. I think, since I don’t even know when you got on the plane. If you feel guilty, my work is complete.

I suppose I should give you an update on things that have changed here since you have gone. These things are nothing, zip, and nil. Your friends have not called to ask about you. Did you tell your friends about going to America and not me? You are the worst boyfriend ever. Seriously the worst. I do not know why I am forgiving you. Maybe because I have the decency to break up with a guy in person.

Since your friends are not talking to you, I can only tell you about mine. Nick is still hitting things with other things and Alan is still reading old books and Sin is still sinning. Mae is learning new crafts to sell at the Market. She says she needs a way to support herself in her old age, since she’s turning the old Mezentius boarding house into a summer camp. I thought businesses were supposed to be profitable but maybe not the way Mae runs them.

I am doing nothing, and doing it fabulously. You would approve; you understand me. Mae says I need to find a calling, and that I will waste away. I think she underestimates the power of my unwasting. I tell her I am gaining valuable leadership skills like negotiation and delegation and all the other ations, prime among which is vegetation. She told me if I was going to vegetate I should take a trowel. I took a trowel, and a pen, and a hammock, and I am languishing in the garden. Like a princess in a tower. You see where this is going?

I promised you a hate letter but I think I am incompetent at that. I have written many other letters to many other people recently, in my role as part of Mae’s burgeoning circus, but Nick has to help with the nasty ones. I have neglected my Evil Jamie. So you see I, at least, can no longer write hate letters. You can, and they are composed of silence.

I miss you. When are you coming home.

Jamie

 

_Skype transcript, 15 June_

JamesHook: I have decided you are like a god, Seb

JamesHook: A really old one

JamesHook: One that people have been praying to for thousands of years

JamesHook: And _still haven’t gotten an answer from._

 

_Skype transcript, 17 June_

JamesHook: What the everlasting - this had better be a tribute to my divine beauty, Seb, because what sort of disappearing-to-America boyfriend writes an honest to god letter?

JamesHook: Okay but it was sweet of you

JamesHook: So maybe I’ll post mine after all

 

_Letter, received 17 June_

Dear Jamie,

It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love you. Are you happy now?

I’m sorry I left and went to America. It seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect maybe it was stupid of me. I’ll be back in five weeks.

So, keeping to the general terms, the professor I work with mostly does field studies up the Amazon. She’s basically trying to discover and catalog as many new species as she can. She’s back in town - yes, there is a town, it is not all acid jungle or whatever you’re going to tell me - to run some tests on specimens in the lab, partly to see if they really are new species. It has to do with the way they reproduce, but she’s hoping for some of the simpler species that she can get one of the genome projects to sequence their DNA, and then she could compare any new species to the database and tell from the statistical significance of their variation whether they’re actually new or not. Of course for that to work you’d have to sequence practically everything, but she has a partner who stays here and tries to get grant money to do that. To be honest I don’t really understand much of it, but she let me borrow a couple of math books, which are fortunately in English, and I’m working through them in the evenings. Also I am learning Portuguese.

So that’s what drew me away from England. Probably it sounds pretty boring to you, but I like it. I’m sorry I was facetious before. I really do miss you, and I miss the Market. Say hi to everyone for me. Don’t let any Market girls give you fever fruit while I’m gone. (Am I even allowed to talk about the Market in letters? I don’t think anyone censors mail... Gosh, there’re some biologists who would give their left eyes to get hold of fever fruit and do tests on it.)

I think you’d like it here. You probably think I’m crazy, and would say something about your delicate complexion, but it’s your sort of city. You could come visit? Or we could come back together some time. The architecture is amazing, I just want to draw everything. (Not quite everything. You know what.) The people are really different too, and when you go out at night - how much should I tell you? How much do I have to tell you to get you to come?

I know I don’t shut up about the city, but I’m really enjoying myself and I want to share that with you. So let me know. Maybe an anniversary thing or something. We could even go up the Amazon a bit like my professor does. Doesn’t have to be very far. I’m  told all concern about your delicate complexion.

Seb

 

_Letter, written 19 June, posted 20 June_

Dear Seb,

For your delighted delectation, I have drawn you an acid jungle. Also a superhero carving his way through it to rescue its victim. That is you, the pile of decomposing slime. You see what happens when you wander off? Art, that is what.

If you’re trying to make me sad and ready to forgive you for everything when you come back, you should have come back last week. This week I could happily consign your body to the wreckage of the Amazon. And I did. See attached.

I don’t care about your shiny city - are there not enough of them here? - or nubile women or leaking petri dishes. Those are not attractive. The attractive thing is you, and you _still_ haven’t told me when you are coming home.

It was sweet of you to write the letter. But next time send an email, they’re faster.

Jamie

 

_Email, received 24 June_

Dear Jamie,

A little more than three weeks.

You know if you keep yelling at me I’m not going to want to come back.

Write me a letter, okay? Tell me more about that superhero who’s going to save me from the acid jungle. Is he hot? But please, please don’t draw anything else. I’ll draw it for you. We’ll make a comic book when I get back.

Seb

 

_Skype transcript, 28 June_

JamesHook: SEB OH MY GOD IF YOU EVER SEND ME A PICTURE OF AN AWFUL CREEPY DEAD BUG AGAIN YOU ARE LIKE SOME SORT OF SICK CAT EW EW GET IT OFF ME MAAAAAAAAE STOP EW EW EW

JamesHook: Sorry, Seb, I don’t think he’s ever going to come to Brazil. But you should have _seen_ his face. Next time send a real bug. - Mae

 

_Email, written 28 June_

Seb,

What is this?

Jamie

 

_Email, written 28 June_

Jamie,

Ah, that would be my lab report. Which I accidentally put in an envelope and mailed to you. Sorry. I sent the proper letter out this morning.

Seb

 

_Letter, received 1 July_

Dear Jamie,

I’m so sorry about that. I found your letter on my desk after I mailed it and I can’t find my lab report now, so I just stayed up an extra three hours rewriting it. Anyway most of the letter was the pictures for your story, so those don’t get outdated and I can still enclose them. It’s not the sort of drawing I usually do, so it was, um, kind of fun. I don’t think they do your story justice though, even just the first few paragraphs I managed to illustrate. I didn’t realize it was quite this much work, and I keep busy enough already...

I’m not complaining. It’s fun working with you, like you’re still around somewhere. I wish you were, you could tell me what to draw and I’d laugh at the ridiculous things you wrote and then we could go walking in the evening after you’d stop complaining about the sun blistering your alabaster skin and making vampire jokes.

I’m not homesick either. I’m still trying to get you to come here. I haven’t even been outside of the city and I’m enchanted. When I come back I’ll speak to you in Portuguese and you won’t know how bad my accent is so you’ll just hear how wonderful it is and maybe you’ll come back with me. You could meet my professor, although honestly I don’t think you’d get along. She’s pretty no-nonsense, and I am gritting my teeth waiting to see what you think of my lab report.

But for a no-nonsense person, and don’t tell her I said this, it seems pretty crazy to be working on a genome library. It’d be more efficient to observe behavior patterns and local environments, maybe even reactions to stimuli although I don’t know, and then she wouldn’t have to come back to town so often. But her partner’s here so maybe that’s why, and she’s right that it would be helpful to have a genome on file for everything. It’s just that making one is a bloody stupid waste of resources.

Seb

 

_Letter, received 4 July_

Jamie,

I think letter etiquette means not sending you a new one until I get yours but ohmygod I am so excited my professor just got an award!

Forget everything I said last time, what she does is totally cool and there are clearly reasons for it that I can’t even begin to explain, it has to do with sequencing and comparisons and actually there are applications to congenital disorders as well, so I just didn’t know what I was talking about. So embarrassing that I ever even wrote it down, oh my god...

Anyway she just got this award and it’s not like a Nobel or anything but she explained it to me and I realized how cool she is and I just had to tell you. And also it means she’ll probably get a whole bunch more grant money, so her next expedition has a little more leeway for luxuries like equipment or staying out longer.

I know you probably don’t really care, but most of the people I know here are associated with the lab and they already know but I had to tell someone.

Seb

 

_Letter, posted 5 July_

Seb,

Wow, I didn’t think you were actually going to illustrate my story. That’s... really cool. And a lot of work. Thanks. It looks a lot better that way, like it ought to be so. So you should definitely come home and draw up the rest.

I’m not entirely boring. I am plagued by niggling nagpies in the form of a sister - you, lucky boy, have no sisters - who want me to _do things_. I told her that I have an entire Circle to run and she should leave me in peace, but apparently I am “stagnating” and this is the first step on the road to living bearded and alone under a bridge somewhere. Ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with beards, I would look glorious in a beard. Nevertheless I have agreed to apprentice myself at the Market, and so my peaceful days have been retired to times of yore. I’m working with Carl; either he was impressed by my magic knife or Nick talked him round. I will be keeping an eye out for a Ryves brother paying his favor, not that it really matters either way.

Knives are terribly boring, Seb. Never get involved with a knife; it will only cut you. My heart bleeds, Sebastian.

Jamie

PS - You wrote me another letter? Is this some sort of weird American holiday ritual?

I’m happy for your professor. There’s so much going on in your life I feel a little drab and boring. Of course I am secretly fabulous and you would not believe what things I am getting up to inside my head. I will write you a whole anthology of stories and then you will have to illustrate them all. Or maybe I will build myself a harem of artist boys all scribbling away. You wouldn’t mind being part of a harem, would you?

 

_Letter, received 12 July_

Jamie,

Knife puns? Really? This is how you react to honest labor?

I guess I’m glad to hear you found something to occupy your time, though I wouldn’t have guessed it would be with Carl. I didn’t think you liked knives. Especially after, you know, the thing with your hand. Maybe I don’t know you as well as I thought.

You should have known I would illustrate your story. I was happy to, and it seemed like the sort of story that needed illustrating. I’m just glad I didn’t accidentally send you the other drawings I’ve been doing recently - my professor has me doing anatomical sketches, so I’m getting much better at proportions and space management, but you probably wouldn’t like my subjects. They’re all bugs. I think it’s fascinating - did you know Leonardo da Vinci used to go through morgues to see how the human body worked so he could get his paintings more anatomically correct? It’s sort of like that. Except with bugs, but that’s cool too because we know so much less about bugs. But imagine if we knew just as much, if we treated bugs medically like humans! Instead we just sort of pick them apart and draw anatomical charts. Which is pretty much what I’m here for, but I’m learning a lot and I can do a lot more than that during my day. It’s a long day, sure, but I get a lot done and I think my professor is happy with my work.

I thought things would quiet down here after she got her award, sort of like things go quiet and sleepy after a big meal, but they’ve just sped up. Everyone thinks she’s going to start a bunch of new projects, so it’s sort of a competition to see who can look best and be most available to take them on. Well, among the people who don’t like their current jobs. And me. It’s a kind of contagious atmosphere, you know? But I’m learning a lot getting my own work done and going to see what I can do for other people.

My professor says when I get back I should write her a couple of papers, one like a grant proposal and one like a research paper, saying what I did while I was here - mostly for practice. You’re the expert at writing, though. Can you help me? We could write them together. And then you’ll know everything  I did, so when I start to tell you about it again, you’ll be justified in complaining.

Seb

 

_Letter, written 13 July_

Seb,

I was not born to honest labor! It is a terrible onus to lay on an unsuspecting lad. Carl is a terrible man for making a body work. Doesn’t my complexion say I am not a man for labor? There are all of these things to lift and swing around, it is much more Nick’s thing than mine. Carl will get what is coming to him, just you wait. I will put bugs in his bed, in your honor.

Some of the Market people want to stop moving around, now they have less to fear from magicians. Some of them like moving around. There’s a big debate up whenever Mae’s about, people trying to show her what good things come of their method and what terrible ones of the other side’s. I don’t know how she stands it. I hide. Of course, I usually hide in Carl’s stall, and then he finds me and makes me work. At least during Markets that means talking to customers instead of waving hammers and swords around. I am wonderful at talking to people. Carl is in awe of me. I know because he stands back and stares. Sometimes I am gracious and let him explain the technical things, or wave the swords around. He does not yet trust me to do this without him, but when he does, I will get Nick to do the waving. Nick always looks impressive with a sword.

Sooo if I write more stories will you illustrate them too? Will I be able to trap you on the floor surrounded by colored pencils and artist’s pens, unable to move for the pile of work? Can I make you sit and stay wherever I like? I will write you good long stories. They take very little time to make, I can put down a couple pages in almost no time at all. Single spaced, too. It’s almost as easy as talking. At least if I am there making lots of words for you, you will not be tempted to spend your time in morgues, insectoid or otherwise. You really ought to stay away from those. People will get ideas. You know what Market people think of magicians and necromancers. Are you going to be an insect necromancer? I think that is a very bad idea. Very, very bad. You should stop your insect necromancy ways.

I don’t think I really get what you mean about activity levels. The Market is mostly just the Market, whether or not Mae is busy. Mae is always busy. I think that is why she wants me to get a ‘real job’, so that I will not be around to pester her or remind her that there are other things to do. I think she needs the reminder, so I should stay right here. Don’t you? I don’t need to be an ~aid to society~. I can be decorative. Decorative is good, and I am good at it. I am stunning. People say so. Regularly. Usually in regards to my conversation, but sometimes because I am wearing a glamour. (I keep my true glory for you, dear. I am saving myself for your return. Also I just learned how to maintain a glamour and I am very proud. Carl says this is an improper use of magic. I don’t think Carl knows what he is talking about, I mean, how would he? All he does is make sharp pointy things.)

This time in two weeks, Seb, you’ll be home. You’ll have been home. Isn’t it exciting! I can’t wait for your next letter, so I am going to stop this one so I can mail it today and get yours sooner.

Jamie

 

_Email, written 18 July_

Seb,

When you get here you have to pick me up and swing me around like a sailor’s girl. I would pick you up but you are made of muscle and lead and also too much length, I would probably fall over. Either way one of us has to wear a sailor suit and it is not going to be me.

Just a week now, can’t wait to get your last letter!

Jamie

 

_Email, written 21 July_

Seb,

I thought you were going to write me a letter? But I should have gotten it by now... maybe the post is late.

Jamie

 

_Email, written 23 July_

Seb,

I swear to God are you ignoring me again, I am going to dress you in _lederhosen_ if you do not write me back.

Jamie

 

_Text, written 25 July_

Jamie,

Look behind you.

Seb

 

Jamie was half turned when Seb reached him and he shrieked as Seb gripped him tight and lifted him into the air.

“Put me down you monster, oh my god, what are you - ack, no, not around - you are an ugly hunk of - of manflesh and you will - did you _read my letter?_ What on four corners of the planet are you wearing?”

“Sailor suit,” Seb said, setting him down. “I missed you.”

Jamie stared at him for a moment and ran a hand through his hair, half exasperation and half to put it back in place. Seb wasn’t quite sure whether he was imagining the glitter that glinted as Jamie’s hair moved. “You - you read my letter. You took me seriously.”

“How else am I supposed to take you?” Seb asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. What am I supposed to do with a, a ridiculous and tall good-looking, sunburnt - wait, you’re not sunburnt. You’re not even tan. How did you do that? Didn’t you just spend six weeks in a jungle?”

“I was in the city. I was working in a lab,” Seb said. He reached down to grab his other bag. “Have you got a car?”

“Yeah, Nick drove me,” Jamie said. Seb rolled his eyes expressively.

“When are you ever going to learn to drive?”

“When I can no longer persuade gorgeous men to drive me around in what I am told is a wonderful and classic car? Nick really adds to my street cred. Come on, it’s this way,” Jamie said. “And you had better have brought me presents, and you had better not have a load of asshole stories to tell about Honduras this and Argentina that and -”

“Jamie,” Seb said, “if Nick drove you, there’s something I want to talk about before we get in the car.”

Jamie stopped abruptly. “No. Oh, no. This is not happening. You picked up some -”

“Can you _listen_ for once?”

Silence. Well, not silence; there was the steady background roar of an airport and a group of passengers trying to pretend they hadn’t been watching a fabulous glitter-strewn blond get swung in circles by a tall boy in a sailor suit.

Seb realized that he was waiting for Jamie to interrupt, and that Jamie wasn’t interrupting; he was staring at Seb levelly, waiting for him to speak. Jamie used understated reactions like some of his friends used knives, but more disconcertingly. Possibly, Seb thought, he was not forgiven for running off to America in the first place.

“Look, I did bring you something,” he said, and fumbled with a pocket in his bag until he found a slightly crudely painted eagle in a star spangled baseball cap. He offered it to Jamie. “Not the statue of liberty, but...”

“Is this bird green?” Jamie demanded, reaching into his pocket so he could attach the tacky little trophy to his key ring. “Only you would run off to America without telling anyone and come back with a jaundice-ridden fleabag bird. I can’t believe you.”

“Yeah, well,” Seb said. “I missed you. A lot.” He took a deep breath and added, “But.”

Jamie raised both eyebrows.

“Soooo my professor was really impressed with my work, and she said that if I wanted I could come back after a couple weeks when she’s going upriver and... I didn’t say no. It’s a big deal. That’s what she’s spending her prize money on - taking me up the Amazon. So. I haven’t decided yet. She said I probably should come home and talk to family first, and that means you I guess. But. I didn’t want to make the same mistake again, so this is me. Telling you.”

“Are you quite finished?” Jamie asked. “Then you should know you’re a dick, Seb.” He turned on his heel and started walking away fast. Seb grabbed his bag and scrambled after.

“Jamie -”

“No. You run away after we fight, you don’t even tell me you’ve _left the country_ , then you come prancing back in a sailor suit to tell me you’re going to leave again and I’m supposed to be happy about that?”

“I _didn’t say yes_. I really wanted to. I could have skipped my flight, stayed there, and gone when she went, but I didn’t because I wanted to talk to you first. I still haven’t said yes, I am just trying to be honest with you this time.”

“So I have what, three weeks to try to convince you to stay?” Seb didn’t say anything. “Less. Great.”

“I’m sorry,” Seb said. “If you want you can just... leave me at the airport. I’ll find some other way back.”

He looked over Jamie’s shoulder, up the wall to the big clock where the second hand lagged on each second before jumping to the next mark. The minute hand clicked into place.

“What, I’m supposed to turn a sparkly heel and leave my friend at the airport? Do you even have a place to stay? Come on.”

Seb blinked. “What, that’s it?”

Jamie was tugging at his bag. “What does this have in it, bricks? Books? Pick it up, gorilla man, we’ve got places to be. You’re going to get Nick a parking ticket.”

“Nick’s a big boy, he can take care of himself,” Seb said and then, remembering who they were talking about, he added, “No, actually, I’d like to see someone try.” Nick had a way of looming and glowering that made most meter maids reconsider whether they really needed to check this strip of sidewalk just now.

“Yeah, me too,” said Jamie cheerfully. He sneaked a glance at Seb. “I have decided that I am incredibly magnanimous and that certain people, even if they are awful boyfriend-stealing louts, are possibly less worthy of holding a grudge against than, say, Helen, who I do business with every day. So you are going to come home with me as planned, and then you are going to do absolutely everything I say to make it up to me until I have convinced you not to go. Deal?”

“Sure, deal,” Seb said dazedly.

“Great! I call shotgun.”

 

Jamie kept trying to start a conversation in the car, but he also kept forgetting that Nick made Seb nervous. Nick, of course, did not say a word, except for once when he looked over at Jamie and said maybe three together that made Jamie double up laughing. Seb scowled jealously. Jamie went back to talking enough for all three of them together.

At least the filled space let Seb catch up on absolutely everything he may have missed while he was away, like that Jamie had apprenticed himself to Carl in a bid to demonstrate to the remnants of the Circle - Circles - how one successfully integrated oneself into the Market. Apparently Jamie liked knives now. In his non-Market life he was, presumably, drawing knives, since Mae had signed him up for an art course. Or Jamie had agreed to be signed up, it was a little unclear, but Jamie didn’t seem to be fighting the art.

“Well, it works for you,” Jamie said.

“Worked,” Seb corrected. “I’m a biologist now.”

“ _Why_?” Jamie wailed. “What’s so wonderful about horrible wriggling things?”

“It’s not the horrible wriggling things,” said Seb.

“Pity,” said Nick. “I was beginning to think we had something in common.” Jamie glared at him on Seb’s behalf, which made Seb feel better about all the letters Jamie had written with Nick’s name in them, and that Nick served as Jamie’s beautiful chauffeur, and that Jamie liked knives enough to consider a career making them, presumably just because of Nick.

“It’s...” said Seb, and tried to think how he could possibly explain what it felt like to know how everything fit in its place and worked together, in a cell, in a body, in an ecosystem - or to see a tiny part of that and start to put the puzzle pieces together, and how knowing that made him fit for anything, just by virtue of his understanding. That had probably never been why Jamie summoned demons. “Tell you what, how about I help you with your art?”

“I don’t see why you don’t just stay here and do art,” Jamie grumbled. “Mae would hire you. You could do marketing. You could do Marketing.”

“Art’s... different,” Seb said. “Anyway I do still do art. Lots of it. Have you ever heard of John James Audobon?”

“Does he do techno?”

“Er... no,” said Seb.*

“I know him,” Nick said. “He draws birds.”

Jamie laughed at Seb’s startled look. “His brother reads a lot, remember?” he asked. “Nick’s picked on more of it than you might think.”

“If you guys are going to be talking about birds, you should get out now,” Nick said, turning onto their road. “I might even stop the car, if you stop talking.”

“So generous,” Jamie said, refusing to even unbuckle until the car had been at a complete stop for three seconds. Nick reached over and shoved him gently out the door as soon as he had it open.

“Bye, kids. Have fun,” Nick intoned.

“You just want us to leave so you can go ravish my sister,” Jamie announced. “I would complain, but I have already endorsed the ravishing. It was a terrible mistake.”

“I don’t complain about your birds. You should leave mine alone,” said Nick, by which point Seb had managed to get himself and his bag out of the car with the dear hope that he would never again have to spend so much time with a demon, even whatever mad sort Nick had become.

“So,” said Jamie. “Mae’s not home, so we have the whole house to ourselves. Come tell me where you learned to dance.”

“Er, I don’t know how to dance,” Seb said. “Mostly I just sort of wiggle and hope.”

“Well then,” said Jamie, “I guess I’ll have to teach you.”

 

Seb spent three days bumming about Jamie’s house, drawing Jamie and being drawn by him - mostly drawing Jamie. Jamie thought he was fabulous, and declared he was helping Seb my modeling for him, and Seb was helping Jamie by providing an example. Seb was pretty sure that Jamie was just vain. It was a nice break after the hectic schedule of the last six weeks, but by the third day he was aching to do something, anything at all.

“Don’t you have to go help Carl at some point?” he asked.

“Nah,” said Jamie. “Didn’t I tell you? I kinda blew up his stall.”

“What?”

“Yeah, not sure what happened, I just walked in all frustrated and next thing I know - boom!” Jamie smacked his hands together. “Metal everywhere. It’s a miracle I survived. Carl did not see it that way. I am not allowed within twenty feet of his stall ever again.”

“Oh,” said Seb. He guessed having as much power as Jamie and a demon friend to give you more might not be entirely sunshine and daisies. “What about the Circles?”

“Market magicians,” Jamie said primly. “We’re telling them that this is an example they cannot sink lower than. It works surprisingly well, unfortunately.”

“Mm,” said Seb, and found himself thinking about how Jamie’s hair would smell, and then he realized that he didn’t have to wonder, he could just walk up behind him and wrap his arms around him and take a deep breath. Even so he couldn’t quite figure it out, it was - sharp, but solid, and there was something bright and _Jamie_ about it...

“What about you?” Jamie asked, snuggling back against him.

“Me?”

“You don’t seem to be putting down any roots. You’re like a little dandelion puff following my hand -” Jamie made several passes with his hand to demonstrate, “- without making any motions of your own. Very dandelion. No roots.”

“I have never heard anyone sound so accusing while talking about dandelions,” said Seb, wondering if Jamie smelled like dandelions. “I haven’t decided yet if I’m staying.”

“That’s the first time you’ve mentioned it since the airport,” said Jamie. “How am I supposed to help you make appropriate boyfriend decisions if you don’t tell me what you’re thinking?”

“I’m not thinking about it, mostly,” said Seb, although the sudden guilty taste in his mouth informed him he was lying. “I’m just... having some time to relax before I make my decision.”

“Relax,” Jamie repeated. “You are about as relaxed as a rat in a shrinking cage. As Han Solo in the garbage disposal thingy. The _terribly unhygienic_ garbage disposal thingy. You have been getting progressively more relaxed the same way Batman got progressively more relaxed after his parents died. Oh wait, did I say relaxed? I meant the other thing.”

“I’m used to working a lot more,” said Seb. “I’ll get over it.”

“Work,” Jamie made a face. “Teaching me to draw isn’t work enough for you? I’m really bad at it.”

“Pretty sure hanging out with my boyfriend doesn’t count as work.”

“But I want you to have work. That you like. Also friends. Because then you will like it here and you will stay, and I want you to stay forever.”

Seb shivered. “Yeah,” he said. “Forever.”

“Or you could be my kept man,” Jamie offered. “Although honestly I was hoping I could be the kept one. Just not in Bolivia.”

“Brazil,” Seb said automatically.

“Yeah, I’ve been winning a lot of pub quizzes trying to figure out where you went. I know all of the cities in Suriguyana.”

“That’s not a place.”

“Darn it! Just when I had stopped calling it Surrogate Mama, too.”

“I shudder to think what the capital of Surrogate Mama would be.”

“Paramour George Town,” Jamie muttered. “I thought it sounded like a nice place. If you worked in Paramour George Town, I would visit you.”

“If I worked in Paramour George Town, I would refuse to let you visit me,” Seb said. “For the good of the city.”

“So you should stay here in Exeter,” Jamie said.

“In Ex -” Seb began, about to continue the game, and then he thought about where that was going and said instead, “Yeah. Here.”

 

Jamie declared that Seb needed friends and until he made them, he could borrow Jamie’s. This was incentive for Seb to make his own friends, since Jamie’s included Nick, who was a demon; Mae, who had once kissed Seb; Alan, who still carried a gun under his shirt and gave the same smile to babies and magicians he was about to kill; and assorted Market people, nearly all of whom Seb had worked for while earning what had turned out to be the money for a plane ticket to Brazil, which had been more than enough time to learn that, changing policies or not, all of them were determined to hate him.

Then there were the magicians, and Seb thought it was probably best for everyone if he stayed away from anything to do with demon summoning for a while longer. When he thought about magicians, he pulled out the textbook his professor had let him borrow and read for a while. When Jamie caught him with a biology textbook, he pulled it out of Seb’s hands and replaced it with the car magazine Seb had borrowed from Nick, usually while complaining that Seb should distract him because nothing he drew came out right and his hands hurt.

“So draw your hand,” Seb said, lounging in Jamie’s unmade bed. “Hands are hard. Good practice.”

“But hands are _hard_. You just said so. Why should I start with something I’m doomed to fail at?”

“Because you’re doomed to fail so you can’t get mad at yourself for not succeeding,” Seb said without looking up from the magazine, “and because it’s right at the end of your arm so you can’t lose it while you’re drawing.”

He looked up a minute later in a panic and said, “Oh my god, that is not what I meant, I am so sorry -”

Jamie shrugged. He had a piece of paper out already. “No problem. I can thwart you, you see: I will draw a hook, and it will be a beautiful piece of mastery. Look.” He picked up the paper and held it up so Seb could lean over and take a look. He’d drawn a couple of curves to make something like a thin banana.

“Great,” said Seb. “You could maybe do some more shading.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had about thirty seconds to do this so now I know how much your compliments are worth,” Jamie said. “Go back to your reading, man-slave. I will dream up tasks for you while I work.”

“Mmhm,” said Seb, going back to the magazine. He flipped through the pages, skimming. “Doesn’t Nick think about anything except cars?”

Jamie considered this and spoke slowly around his drawing, as if he had stuck the pencil in his mouth instead of in his hand. Seb would not have been surprised to look over and see him with the eraser between his teeth. Still, if this were the way to get Jamie to slow down, he was pretty sure the world would rejoice. He reached down to fetch some licorice out of the bag Jamie had grudgingly retrieved for him after much loud complaining about his taste.

“Cars. Mae. Swords. Not so much magic anymore. Alan, definitely, he still hasn’t gotten used to having Sin around - Mae’s after him to move out but you know Nick... nah, but you’re right. Three-track mind, our Nick. Is there something wrong with cars?”

“They’re just - boring,” Seb said. “No life in them. I mean, you can memorize the words for all the parts, but why bother? It doesn’t tell you anything about them, and I don’t know why you would want to know about them in the first place.”

“Unlike biology?”

“No, biology is - is light and photosynthesis and DNA replication and - you are not going to listen to a word I say about this. It’s, it’s changing all the time and there’s so much diversity, and exuberance, and things you’d never have thought of, but - they exist anyway. They don’t need you to exist. And every bit is important, every bit of every cell comes together to produce something so hugely amazing in all its variety - millions of things have to come out right for just one little animal to work properly. So you would think it would be impossible to understand, but once you name the parts you can gather them up into bits until you know this bit goes there and this bit here and then you have a su- a scientific chart of the thing and it all fits. And it’s complex and every bit is necessary, but then you find jellyfish, with no real brain and no skeleton - totally simple form of life, and there are billions of them. Thousands of species! And one of the grad students told me there are scorpions...”

Jamie didn’t answer for a while, just let Seb talk, and his back didn’t move except in the strange, jerking manner of pulling the pencil across the page when he wasn’t used to doing so. “Sounds nice,” he said when Seb ran down. “Too bad there’re a bunch of icky bugs involved.”

“Jamie, you’re really going to have to start thinking of this in some other terms than ‘icky bugs -’”

“Look what I made,” said Jamie, spinning around in his chair and promptly crashing into the other side of his desk. He groaned and righted himself, holding the slightly crinkled paper out to Seb to inspect. Seb would grant him that the hook looked rather more realistic now, and it had something at the bottom that might be the cuff thing of the hook.

Cuff thing. Maybe Seb ought to take more interest in Jamie’s life as well.

“Much better,” said Seb.

“Yeah, I couldn’t get the cuff thing right, can you come take a look?” Jamie turned back around, assuming Seb would get up and Seb, who had finished with the magazine, was happy enough to do so. Jamie jabbed at the paper and Seb stood over him - loomed over him, really. Seb wasn’t really comfortable with the amount of body he had in non-looming situations, except when Jamie made him feel okay about it. Seb loomed over him and tried to give him thoughtful commentary on how to do things better, tricks he hadn’t thought about in years.

“Thanks,” said Jamie eventually, “you can stop talking now.”

“Sorry,” said Seb, and moved toward the bed again.

“No, sit down!” Jamie ordered, gesturing at a chair part way across the room that was fully covered in Seb’s clothes. Officially Seb was living in the guest bedroom down the hall; unofficially he spent all his time in Jamie’s room. Seb fetched the chair, dumping the clothes among the others on the floor, and pulled it over to the side of Jamie’s desk. “You do some sort of background embellishment in case I need you,” Jamie said, handing him a pencil, and proceeded to ignore him again.

Seb shrugged and, after a moment, began a geometric doodle that slowly angled its way across the page. Jamie kept bumping into his hand and apologizing; Seb apologized back, until it started happening often enough that both of them just made soft grunting noises like a sty full of sows, and even that faded into quiet. Seb didn’t think of anything much; the paper, where he might doodle next, how to avoid the curve of whatever Jamie was doing, Jamie’s hand, his pencil, his arm, the warmth of his skin, his breathing, the smell of his breath and of his skin, which was spicy, or like vanilla, or perhaps nutty, but also clean and light...

Jamie kissed him first. It didn’t even feel like an interruption of what they were doing; Jamie just looked up, and Seb looked up too to see what he was going to ask about, and so Jamie leaned closer and Seb sighed and relaxed into it. He reached over to touch Jamie, anticipating a long, slow, and slightly awkward period of exploration to follow, and then Jamie peeled away from him and made a disgusted face and noises like an engine dying.

“What?”

“You taste like licorice,” Jamie complained.

“Oh. Sorry,” Seb said.

“I told you that was a bad idea.”

“I didn’t know you were planning to secondhand taste it,” Seb said. “I could brush my teeth?”

“I dunno that I have much more to do with this,” Jamie said, gesturing at the sketch. It really wasn’t half bad for a beginner. If Seb were Jamie, he would claim it was all his excellent mentoring skill.

“Oh,” said Seb.

“No, but we could do more of the rest of it!” Jamie assured him. “I just mean - without pencils. Getting in the way. Stabbing things. Sharp pointed things, pencils. Sort of like knives. Without the blades. I know all about knives now. And they’re not, um, what you want to find in people’s hands when you’re, uh...”

“Kissing them?” Seb suggested.

“Yeah. Or, uh, lying down on the bed and, um, taking their shirt off.” Seb raised his eyebrows. Jamie blushed deeply. “I, um. I’m not sure about the rest of it. Yet. Last time. Um. Only if you’re okay with it?”

“No, I am totally okay with that, I am one hundred percent behind it,” Seb assured him. “I’ll go brush my teeth. Um. Right now.”

“Yeah. Well, I learned to dance from an incubus, so I will be waiting for you. Sexily.”

“Incubus?”

“Kind of a long story,” Jamie said. “Contrary to expectations, not ultimately the best day of my life. But very sexy.”

“All right then,” said Seb. “I’ll toothbrush, you incubus, we’ll meet back here and have no-shirts festival day.”

 

After that they made a tradition of no-shirts festival days, or even beshirted cuddling, and in the evening after Seb finished impressing the Crawfords with his limited cooking skills, Jamie crawled into bed with him and talked. Earlier, if it was Friday night and Mae had taken off her business heels - Jamie said she wore them in honor of their mother - and gone on a date with Nick.

Some nights Seb knew it wasn’t going to work, and lay quietly hoping Jamie wouldn’t notice. Mostly it didn’t work, and he lay listening to Jamie wondering how and when to bring up what was bothering him. Finally he just interrupted, and found that Jamie was mostly trying to keep him from doing just that.

“Jamie, I want to go back to Brazil,” he said.

“You what.”

“Just because you’re wasting your life away here -”

“I’m - I’m not wasting! I was writing you a book!” Jamie blurted. Seb stared, the indignation he had been trying to build draining away to guilt. Jamie got up and dug furiously in his desk drawer, then shoved some papers at Seb. “There. See.”

Seb flipped through the pages, not quite able to read, some vague idea of Bioman in the Acid Jungle flitting across his senses, that Jamie wanted to do this with him, Jamie wanted him, and that none of it was ever going to matter. That Jamie had been holding on to him since Seb almost killed himself in his back yard, and none of it was ever going to have mattered.

He kept trying to read the book; he didn’t want to look up and see Jamie see that it wasn’t going to work, like the tingling in his fingers that meant he wouldn’t be able to hang on.

“It’s...”

“I know.” Jamie flopped onto the bed. “You sure you don’t want to deflower my maiden virtue before you go?”

“Maiden.” Seb snorted, but Jamie flapped a hand at him, so Seb curled up around him and tried to memorize the press of his bones. This leg here; that pocket of warmth; the arm that wrapped around him but didn’t have a hand to curl on his side and the hand that pooled at his stomach in its place; the shoulder digging into his throat so he couldn’t quite breathe comfortably, but he was never going to move. Not until his plane took off for America again and left Jamie with just an off-color eagle and a handful of letters.

“I’ll write,” Seb promised. “I’ll send you packages when we come back to town.”

“Yeah,” said Jamie. “There’s this guy down the pub who was trying to pick me up anyway. I’m not waiting again, Seb. If you go, you leave this behind, too.”

“Yeah,” said Seb. “I kind of figured you’d say that.”

Jamie smelled of sunflowers and a sliver of magic. Seb took a last deep breath.

 

He didn’t dare write for weeks. Every time he took out a sheet of paper he stared at it, then did some work he had been avoiding because that seemed less painfully awkward. In the end he mailed Jamie a small package, and wished that he could see his face when he opened it.

Jamie did the next best thing and sent a picture of himself back. Seb wasn’t sure why until he noticed his own note framed in the background: _Hey, Jamie. I found a new bug and I named it after you. F. crawfordus. It’s not a big deal, there’s a lot of bugs here._

His collection grew: _Hey, Jamie. I found a new bug and I named it after you. F. jamicus. I guess I’m not that good at naming things._

_Hey, Jamie. I found a new bug and I named it after you. F. hookicus. You still haven’t changed your Skype handle, I told you to years ago._

Jamie was better at hanging on to these things, probably because he had a permanent residence to put them in. Seb, who had been graciously granted a carrel at a university he did not attend, stocked it with Jamie’s comic books, which for a very long time were ridiculously obscure - but Seb’s interest ensured they were stocked in Macapá, and he harbored a vague hope that that would reflect well on Jamie somehow.

He gathered from Jamie’s letters, which he got in a stack every time he came back to town, that Jamie had moved out of his sister’s house; that he had a boyfriend, or a series of them; that he had been invited to his first conference. Seb didn’t understand it any better than Jamie understood the papers Seb wrote; they tried not to talk too much shop, which sometimes didn’t leave a lot to talk about. It didn’t matter a lot; Seb liked leaving the phone on and listening to Jamie breathe, or talk, which came as naturally to him as breathing.

“My boyfriend broke up with me the other day,” he said once.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Jamie.

“He said I spent too much time talking to the hottie in the back of my comic books.”

“Oh, _well_ ,” Jamie said, picking up on Seb’s tone. “I can’t help it if Peruvian hotties are throwing themselves at me from across the ocean. It must be my elfin beauty.”

Seb snorted. “He snored anyway. It wouldn’t have lasted.”

“You’re just picky,” Jamie said, and babbled happily about his own boyfriend as if he had a leg to stand on. Seb, listening, leaned his chair back so he could peer out the window and found the sun was just starting to break through the clouds outside. Jamie, of course, would have no interest in hearing about that, so he let Jamie keep talking about boyfriends and the Market and demon editors. Jamie wasn’t his boyfriend; Seb wasn’t sure what to call him. Something a hell of a lot more comfortable. Something he didn’t have to depend on and didn’t have to worry about screwing up.

“Hey,” he said, and Jamie quit talking, which was almost a disappointment. “I’m thinking about having something delivered but I’m leaving in a couple weeks. Can I use your address again?”

“Get a house, loser,” said Jamie. “Of course. Any sort of special care I should take? Refrigerate on sight? Decontaminate everything the box touches?”

“Nah, just open it for me,” Seb said. “I’ll let them know to hand it over to you; they might want a signature.”

“Eugh,” said Jamie. “Signatures I can do. Signatures I have done. So many. So very, very many. If I ever see my name again, I may vomit. Are you sure I can’t hand them a copy of my book instead?”

“Not precisely how these things work,” Seb said. “I can send you something for the vomiting.”

“ _No,_ Seb, _please_ do not send me anything else from your godforsaken jungle! Seb - Seb, are you listening?”

Seb was holding the phone away from his head, covering his mouth to keep from laughing, pretending to have hung up. He listened to Jamie rail as if they both didn’t know what it meant for Seb to keep naming ants after him. As if Seb didn’t know what it meant to send Jamie the carbon copy of his honorary degree.

He liked listening to Jamie rant. He liked thinking of the pseudo-angry message he’d have on his phone when he got back, Jamie complaining that he was the worst friendfriend ever dropping degrees across his porch, and of the conversation they’d have after that, when Seb would pretend to be offended that Jamie didn’t think he could have earned a real degree. He liked having someone to come home to.

Unlike magic, it would last.


End file.
